Deep in the bowels of the New York Public Library’s
manuscript collection, there is a notebook penned by George
Washington. In it he set down a recipe for his “small
beer,” the type brewed in many 18th-century colonial
homes, including Mt. Vernon:
“Take a large Siffer [Sifter] full of Bran Hops
to your Taste. Boil these 3 hours then strain out 30 Gall[ons]
into a cooler put in 3 Gall[ons] Molasses while the Beer
is Scalding hot or rather draw the Melasses into the cooler
& St[r]ain the Beer on it while boiling Hot. let this
stand till it is little more than Blood warm then put
in a quart of Yea[s]t if the Weather is very Cold cover
it over with a Blank[et] & let it Work in the Cooler
24 hours then put it into the Cask -- leave the bung open
till it is almost don[e] Working -- Bottle it that day
Week it was Brewed.” (beerhistory.com)
By the time Washington scribbled his recipe, brewers had
been producing malt liquors for more than 6,000 years.
Beer in its simplest form is fermented grain -- evidence
of its use is found in the ancient Fertile Crescent civilizations
of Mesopotamia and Egypt. Some anthropologists have even
argued that beer, rather than bread, was the force behind
the development of civilization. In A History of the
World in 6 Glasses, author Tom Standage theorizes
that the long life of stored grains allowed nomadic hunter-gatherers
to settle near their food supplies. The need to keep track
of their stores in turn led to the development of the
trappings of civilization – accounting, writing
and bureaucracy. So beer, a byproduct of stored grain,
and the rise of civilization are intimately linked.
While Washington may not have known beer’s lofty
origins, he realized the value of a home-grown product.
In true “buy American” form, he wrote to the
Marquis de Lafayette in 1789, “We have already been
too long subject to British prejudices. I use no porter
[a dark, sweet ale] or cheese in my family, but such as
is made in America, both these articles may now be purchased
of an excellent quality”. Two centuries earlier,
in 1587, Europeans had brewed the first beer in the New
World at Sir Walter Raleigh’s ill-fated Virginia
colony, but weren’t pleased with the result. They
sent back to England for better quality beer. Unfortunately,
when it finally arrived, the colony had vanished.
Today, despite valiant efforts by the Mid-Atlantic
Association of Craft Brewers, which launched a “Virginia
is for Beer Lovers” campaign a few years back, the
Old Dominion’s breweries have not achieved the national
reputation of our wineries. This might be due in part
to their smaller numbers. Besides two large beer manufacturers
– Budweiser in James City County and Coors in Rockingham
County -- there are just a dozen or so microbreweries
and some breweries attached to restaurants, known as brewpubs.
The large beer manufacturers produce massive amounts of
beer – seven million barrels per year, as opposed
to amounts ranging from 500 to 4,500 barrels per year
for Virginia’s microbreweries. (Barrel measures
seem to vary according to what is stored in them -- 31
gallons in a barrel of beer; 42 in a barrel of oil.)
Just as an aside, according to GMU’s Charlie Grymes’
virginiaplaces.org, Coors sends a “beer concentrate”
in tank cars to Rockingham County from its headquarters
in Golden, Colorado. Adding water and packaging in Virginia
reduces costs (Beer
and Breweries in Virginia). And it means Coors drinkers
here have some local water mixed with their Rocky Mountain
springs.
Beer basically has four ingredients – grain, yeast,
hops (a type of flowering plant that adds the bitter flavor
to a brew) and water. Some Virginia microbreweries try
to adhere to a 16th-century German purity law, known as
Reinheitsgebot, which restricted brewers to water, hops
and barley malt. (Yeast hadn’t been discovered yet).
The larger beer manufacturers add non-barley grains, such
as corn and rice, which true brew aficionados deplore.
In fact, the Old Dominion’s microbrewers are proud
of their designer beers. Some opt for purity; others boast
brews with extras, such as fruits and spices and even
marshmallow, graham and vanilla.
Thanks to the efforts of the craft brewers, the Virginia
Tourism Corporation now devotes a section of its “Quench
Your Thirst” Web page to beer makers in the Commonwealth
(Beer:
What's Brewing). A Web site called beerme.com also
provides an exhaustive, up-to-date list of Virginia breweries
(Breweries
in Virginia). Washington would be proud that his taste
for good local ale has lasted through the centuries.
Do you have a preferred Virginia brew? Tell
us about it and we’ll let you know the results.
November 14, 2005.
Nice & Curious
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Last Modified:
Friday, June 27, 2008
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